“Can I help with something?” Amy asked.
“Just stay out of the way.” Businesslike. No time for chitchat.
When he’d crushed and mixed the powder to his satisfaction, he took a handful, flung it at the candle flame with a few harsh syllables.
A purple gout of flame erupted from the candle, engulfed the entire rooftop. Allen and Amy flinched, but the flame was cool, didn’t burn. The purple light continued to shimmer around them, turned the world beyond the rooftop into a hazy blur, like they were looking at Prague through the bottom of a bottle of grape soda.
“Damn,” Amy whispered.
Allen agreed. Damn.
“This is a particularly potent casting,” Zabel said. “Usually I do this for people who’ve lost a loved one, six months dead or a year. I thought I’d better crank up the power for what we need. I hope I haven’t overdone it. I wouldn’t want this to turn into a cattle call.”
“What’s that?” Amy asked.
“Sometimes the summoning catches other spirits. Not all ghosts are at the same level of self-awareness. A powerful spell like this… moths to a flame. Even when it’s not meant for them, they often come anyway.”
“That doesn’t sound very useful,” Allen said. “Do we have to wait very long or-shit!”
Allen jumped back, bumped into Amy. A glowing apparition hovered in front of him. A young girl, a ragged slice across her throat. Her eyes were hollow, her mouth open, a vague moan.
“That’s just Bethany,” Zabel said. “She haunts the building next door, so she didn’t have far to come. Murdered, I think, but I don’t know the whole story.”
“Great.” Allen tried to sound sarcastic, but it came out slightly frightened. “How many more of these things?”
Zabel grinned. “Wait and see.”
FORTY-THREE
As wizards go, Zabel is a better technician than he is a scholar. You can see he has little interest in reading my diary. To him it’s more useful as a component for his spell. But he knows about the philosopher’s stone-the legends, anyway. The notion that the stone holds some secret power appeals to his natural wizardly greed for power.
I suppose it’s possible that-
Did you feel that? No? Okay, sorry. Got distracted. As I was saying-
There it is again!
Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that.
I feel it tugging me so hard that I dig in my heels. Not actually my heels, of course. That’s just the outside manifestation of my resistance. If you were able to see me being dragged along the halls of Prague Castle, you’d see my heels digging in, my hands grabbing at doorknobs and window ledges, like a doomed astronaut trying to keep from being blown out an airlock. That’s what it looks like, but it’s with my mind that I resist.
I don’t fight it too long. Too strong. Some mighty hand that has reached for me, grabbed me.
I go with the flow and start to fly, sailing over the castle walls and toward the river. I haven’t been this far in decades. I stop wondering what’s happening to me, such is the awe of seeing this part of Prague again for the first time in so very long. I’m over the river now, a tour barge below me, young couples sipping wine. I am equal parts blue sky and wind.
The far bank comes into view, crowded Josefov beyond that. I have not seen the Jewish Quarter in three hundred years. I glance to the right and to the left. A half-dozen glowing streaks in the sky, ghosts like me. We converge on the same place.
A pulsing purple beacon on a Josefov rooftop. I feel like a kite being reeled in, right toward the rooftop. People standing there I recognize. I already know them, yet I’ve never met them before. Time works so strange here.
I land on the rooftop. Zabel is there, sending away other ghosts, lost souls. Confused. I don’t want this. I try to blend in, hide toward the back of the crowd. Zabel spots me over the shoulder of another ghost, and I look away.
Come here.
I shake my head no.
Yes.
I resist, but it’s no use. I float toward him. He has me now. The other ghosts fade, dissolve, dismissed. They evaporate to whatever perpetual doom they call home. It’s only me and Amy and Allen and Zabel holding my leash.
You are Edward Kelley?
I say nothing. My ghost teeth bite my ghost tongue. The pain is real.
ARE YOU EDWARD KELLEY?
Yes.
Zabel pauses to say something to Allen and Amy, but I can’t hear it. It’s as if a translucent, purple curtain hangs between us. Zabel turns back to me.
Tell me about the philosopher’s stone.
I say nothing.
Tell me.
No.
Now Zabel gets tough. I feel something, like he’s reaching inside me, strong-arming. It feels like cold iron fingers in my chest, getting a hold of my soul, squeezing it like a physical thing. I scream, and nobody hears it. I cry. Nobody sees the tears.
I see the look on Zabel’s face. Annoyed. Like he couldn’t open a tough jar of peanut butter.
And then there is pain. I talk, spill everything I’ve ever known or will know about the stone. I’m not sure how long it takes. I talk until I stop, and then Zabel asks another question and I talk again. It becomes a kind of confession, but Zabel becomes impatient whenever I get too personal. He cares not one tiny shit about my tortured soul. Just the facts, man.
And I’m weeping. Telling it all over again. It has been so long, so many years. To talk to somebody and have them talk back. But he’s finished before I am. I want to tell him so much more, so much I’ve seen over the years and centuries. Zabel’s indifference is like a punch in the face.
Where is Roderick the astrologer buried?
I tell him. Why not? I’d tell him anything. Just please keep talking to me.
The Vysehrad. Prague’s other castle.
FORTY-FOUR
“Where’s he going?” Allen asked.
“I sent him away,” Zabel said. “It was almost as difficult as summoning him in the first place.”
“Did you find out? What did he say?”
“The Vysehrad,” Zabel said. “That’s where Roderick is buried. There’s a cemetery there. I imagine that’s where he is.”
“What’s the Vysehrad?” Allen asked.
“South,” Amy said. “It’s a fort.”
“Tell us the rest,” Allen said. “What else did he say?”
“Come with me.” Zabel headed for the hatch in the roof.
Allen hesitated. “Where are you going?”
“This is important,” Zabel said. “Hurry.” He disappeared down the hatch.
“Come on,” Amy said.
They followed Zabel down the spiral stairs and then down to the first floor. Zabel glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were still following. He led them through a cramped kitchen. Another door. More stairs. Down.
In the basement. Allen glanced around. A cupboard. A chair. Shelves with bottles and jars of who-knew-what. A small table with a dirty tablecloth. It was a small room, dimly lit. “What are we doing here?”
“Please,” Zabel said. “Stand over by that wall.” He pointed to the only wall bare of shelves or other furnishings.
Amy and Allen stood against the wall.
“Hold out your hands,” Zabel said.
Amy and Allen looked at each other.
An impatient sigh from Zabel. “Come on, come on.”
Amy and Allen each held out their right hand. Zabel placed a smooth chunk of quartz into each upturned palm, muttered a smattering of unintelligible words.
Allen felt himself go rock-solid stiff.
He tried to turn his head, blink his eyes. No go. He was a statue. He couldn’t even glance sideways to see if the same thing had happened to Amy, although he assumed it had. He couldn’t even feel himself breathing.
“You’re both okay,” Zabel said. “But I need to keep you on ice while I check this out. It’s still hard to believe. The philosopher’s stone. But if it is true… well, that’s the wizard’s jackpot, isn’t it?”
Allen thought, Eat shit, cocksucker as loud as he could on the off chance wizards could read minds.
“I might have more questions for you,” Zabel said. “So I’m keeping you until I can confirm or deny this fairy tale. I’ll need to go up to my office, gather some things, look up a few spells. Then I suppose I’m off to the cemetery. Now, don’t go anywhere, you two.”
He went back upstairs.
Allen tried to move any part of his body-finger, toe, tongue, eyebrow. He might as well have been carved from marble. How many minutes slipped by? Thirty? Forty? An hour? It was amazingly difficult to measure the passage of time when one was forced to remain utterly motionless. No windows. No sounds. This could drive him mad in no time flat. He could not stop trying to look at Amy.
Allen heard something, almost like a faint scratching. He would have whipped his head around to look if he hadn’t been frozen. The door creaked open. Footfalls came down the steps, a strange clicking. Oh, hell. What was coming for them? Maybe Zabel had decided he didn’t need them after all and had come to tie up loose ends.
Allen tried one more time to move any part of his body. Stone still.
The wolf’s head came into view. There was still an instinctual moment of fear before relief flooded him. Penny. Thank God. He tried to will the wolf to action. Come on, knock the quartz out of my hand. You can do it. Come on, figure it out.